Last week, FarmVille puppies made a grand entrance into the Market, but like most aspects of our virtual farm, it requires a little effort to keep the puppies from running away and helping them grow into a healthy adult — namely, making sure you come back every 20 hours or so to feed your puppy kibble for 14 days.

Lots of questions have sprung up about how to get kibble, how to feed puppies kibble and how to deal with puppy who runs away if you miss a day of food.

How to Get Kibble:

There are two ways to acquire Puppy Kibble in FarmVille — as a free gift sent by friends or purchased in the in-game Market for 3 FV dollars per serving.

If you want to be more pro-active and make sure you stock up on all of the kibble you need to turn your puppy into a full-grown dog, you can ask friends to send more puppy kibble by posting a message your Facebook wall. To request more kibble, right-click on your puppy and select ‘Ask for Kibble’ from the pop-up menu.

Then click ‘Ask for Kibble’ from the second pop-up menu and you’ll be prompted to post a Facebook message on your wall. Then friend can click ‘Send puppy kibble’ directly from your Wall post.

How to Feed Your Puppy Kibble

After stocking up on Kibble, the next move is to actually make sure your puppy gets fed. Every day — for 14 days — you’ll need to log in to FarmVille to feed your puppy. A thought bubble with a bag of kibble will appear over the puppy’s head when it’s ready for food. To feed the puppy, click on them and then select ‘Feed’ in the drop down menu and the food will be automatically extracted from your gift box. Alternately, you can go to your gift box and click ‘Use’ on the kibble for the same effect. Once you feed your puppy, it’ll writhe on the ground and three small hearts will appear above its head (it’s really quite adorable).

A few other things to keep in mind about feeding your puppy: You cannot feed them until they are hungry. You can tell how much longer you have to wait to feed them by mousing over your puppy, which shows a countdown until feeding time. Once you feed the puppy, the counter will reset to roughly 21 hours. Since you have 24 hours to feed your puppy before it runs away, that means you have several hours, as a sort of grace period, in which to feed your furry friend before it goes searching for greener pastures.

If Your Puppy Runs Away

Miss a day of feeding your puppy, and it will run away — then you’ll have to pay 2 FarmVille Cash to get them back.

Have any additional FarmVille puppy care tips? Or just looking for a few new FarmVille neighbors? Leave a comment below.